Why it sucks to be a content creator

[ Martino ]

reasons why it sucks to be a content creator
1) everybody profits, except you
1a) you get a ♥♥♥♥ton of backslash everytime you publish a mod, its either sound, animation, UI, model, something that "doesnt fit the styole" or "is too simple". And if not, its just a bunch of request of which 80% has already been made or is completely useless
1b) your mods will get pirated which is frustrating as hell, also the pirates get money out of it, you not
1b bis) your mods will get cracked which means you are basically handing out free assets that costed you several hours to make
1c) some prick on youtube will make a completely useless video about it, however, he does get money while you actually did the hard work
1d) your seemingly perfect mod on which you worked a few weeks might just get burried by someone who succesfully downloaded his first model ever
1e) You give the game almost all of its value, while only Steelraven and the youtubers get the money. And when theres a 7day game contest, you can just forget about updates
1f) summary, it costs you a lot of time, you're making money for others, you hand out free assets and you get a ♥♥♥♥ton of criticism while you are actually giving the game almost all of its value: no mods, no ravenfield... Its making you kinda depressed, try changing my mind
+ some wise words from a friend of mine: we (content creators) are actually making the game good for steel, who is probably not a fulltime dev as some may say... in the last 2 months the "new things" were 2 maps, which actually are made by someone else (Aubrey) + there are a lot more indie game devs out there that put way more work into their creation than someone who spends their afternoon chilling, watching some tutorials and coding a bit to release something the next month, oh and I forgot about the break when theres something else to do aka 7dfps
he doesnt take things serious enough

**Big Sidenote:**
Part 1) a - f is written by me, based on my own opinion and others
part 2) is written by a friend of mine, seriously, please dont take this as an offense and please dont put me responsible for that, Im just the one adressing it, hoping something might change for the better in the future

[Vel]

I kind of have to agree on 1a to 1e. It's what mostly every content creator suffers or has suffered

[Eliphaser]

pretty correct, and also pretty much one of the factors that make me too lazy to mod

[Hijong park]

I make mods to enjoy it myself so it doesn't matter.

[Sasha Mason]

Btw, there's a TL;DR version down at the bottom if you can't be bothered reading my essay.






Ok so, to sum it up, your main issue seems to be that you don't earn and money from it, am I right? Or the issue is that you don't earn anything from it while others do earn money even though they did less work.

Oookkaaaaaay. So to start off, let me just go through each point you just made and I'll say what I think about it.


"1) everybody profits, except you"

That's kind of how it is in pretty much every game ever. Exceptions to that rule are rare, and imo it's a good thing because personally, I would hate if each mod would be its own microtransaction DLC that may or may not even work properly, or have the same or better standards than the base game assets. The best way to go about it is by accepting donations. Sure, you're most likely not going to do it as a full time job but you would still profit from it in some way.


"1a) you get a ♥♥♥♥ton of backslash everytime you publish a mod, its either sound, animation, UI, model, something that "doesnt fit the styole" or "is too simple". And if not, its just a bunch of request of which 80% has already been made or is completely useless"

Because people are idiots and no matter what you do, there's always someone who criticizes just for the heck of it. There are people who even criticized Steelraven's game jam game, even though it was made in only a week and is completely free as well. Though you should also consider the difference between people just blatantly hating on stuff and people who actually saw a flaw in what you made and reported it back to you so that you could improve. Feedback is key to improving, but haters will also always be there. Gotta figure out the difference between those two but it's unavoidable and gets worse the more popular your mods get.


"1b) your mods will get pirated which is frustrating as hell, also the pirates get money out of it, you not"

Pirates are and will always be a problem. Game developers had to deal with for a very long time, and not even triple A developers and publishers manage to make their games secure from that. There's a Discord Server dedicated to dealing with this however and you might be able to take some of the links down, but in the end, there's really nothing that can really stop them. Be it mods or the game itself. And yes, I know it sucks.


"1b bis) your mods will get cracked which means you are basically handing out free assets that costed you several hours to make"

Yikes. I had no idea, but yeah, that's pretty bad.


"1c) some prick on youtube will make a completely useless video about it, however, he does get money while you actually did the hard work"

Not all YouTubers get money though, and I wouldn't really call it useless. If said YouTuber likes to play the game and mess around with mods and the viewers like to keep watching it, then I don't see the issue. I also don't see how this is negatively affecting you since he's basically advertising your work for free. Sooooo imo a bit weird to hate on YouTubers now.


"1d) your seemingly perfect mod on which you worked a few weeks might just get burried by someone who succesfully downloaded his first model ever"

A problem which was supposed to be fixed by the ingame mod spotlight. But you know what would also work to get people to pay attention to your mods? YouTubers.


"1e) You give the game almost all of its value, while only Steelraven and the youtubers get the money. And when theres a 7day game contest, you can just forget about updates"

Again, donations. Unless you want to sell your mods but I can already tell ya that something like that doesn't work.


"1f) summary, it costs you a lot of time, you're making money for others, you hand out free assets and you get a ♥♥♥♥ton of criticism while you are actually giving the game almost all of its value: no mods, no ravenfield... Its making you kinda depressed, try changing my mind"

Making mods in a nutshell.


"+ some wise words from a friend of mine: we (content creators) are actually making the game good for steel, who is probably not a fulltime dev as some may say... in the last 2 months the "new things" were 2 maps, which actually are made by someone else (Aubrey)"

Only Mountain Range was made by Aubrey, and it's the only non-Steelraven official map that is in the game. And I kind of don't fully agree here. Sure, modders drastically increase the value of the game and the replayability by providing a ton of extra content, but Steelraven is still the one who originally made the game on which all that content runs on. That, and the fact that Steelraven provides the mod tools and an ever increasing amount of possibilities to mod the game. Not necessarily because he profits from it but also because people keep asking him to add XYZ. Skins for example? That's something that people have been requesting quite a bunch. And about the "fulltime dev", it just means that working on the game is the only job that he has. It doesn't mean that he works 24/7 on it or has a 40 hour work week.

Now I'd like to say that you as a content creator should know better how much effort it is to create an entirely new map with new assets but, your only submission is a weapons mod so you wouldn't really know. And consider that he's doing the maps along side all the changes to the code as well.



"+ there are a lot more indie game devs out there that put way more work into their creation than someone who spends their afternoon chilling, watching some tutorials and coding a bit to release something the next month, oh and I forgot about the break when theres something else to do aka 7dfps
he doesnt take things serious enough"

I kind of disagree. Well, I dunno how other indie game devs do their stuff but I do think that Steelraven is providing new updates in regular intervals. What does it matter if he decides to partake in a game jam resulting in a 1 week break? Are people really that desperate for updates? The game is coming along really nicely and it'll probably be finished soon as well. I also don't really see how the critizising the developer has anything to do with content creators having a hard time. If he didn't make the game or provided the proper modding tools, you wouldn't even be modding at all.



"Im just the one adressing it, hoping something might change for the better in the future"
Well here's the problem though: Most of the things you've addressed will never change or if they do, people wouldn't accept it.

Pirates will always be a problem and there is no real way of stopping them, YouTubers will be around for as long as YouTube itself is around and selling mods is usually something that people won't like at all. If the mod offers enough high quality content, you can try it. Otherwise, it'll just feel like microtransactions and nobody likes those.

Btw, maybe you should look at the things other modders have done for free, like the Arma 3 RHS mod that provides at least two ton of high quality assets to the game. Everything from uniforms, vehicles, weapons, and a lot of that stuff with a higher quality and more functionality than the base game assets - all for free.


TL;DR version:

So to sum it up, yeah, you're making some good points, but here's the problem: That's just what modding comes down to. If what you're making in your free time is supposed to earn you something, then you should reconsider whether modding a game is really the right choice for you. No offense but, it almost sounds like you came here with the wrong expectations. Everywhere where I've looked so far, modders always work for free. Sometimes they accept donations, and rarely are there mods that come with such a volume of content that they're selling it. Good example being a Portal 2 mod that has so many extra hours of playtime that it almost classifies as an inofficial expansion pack / DLC.

But that would never work with something like just a weapon mod. Even though Bethesda likes to think otherwise, it just won't work.



And to finish it up, all I can really say is that if you don't like working for free or don't enjoy making mods, then your best option is to just not make any mods. No one forces you to make 'em, and you can either decide that it isn't worth the effort or you make 'em anyways because that's what you enjoy doing. Having such a lengthy post though won't change anything.

[JETZAL]

f

[D Dawg]

People will give feedback, regardless if any of it is useful or not. That's to be expected anywhere on anything. Once you make something and publish it, there's no stopping people from taking and redistributing your content, you should be aware of the implications surrounding modding. I can imagine that seeing your mods on other sites must suck, but there's honestly no stopping it. Imagine how game devs feel with actual paid products being shared around.

If you like modding though, make mods then. Don't expect people to hail you as a hero, or kiss the ground at your feet. Do it as a hobby, not a job. Mod for the sake of modding. From what I've seen, there is a lot of entitlement from some modders. Some expecting their mods to be the most downloaded, or even dissing new and inexperienced modders because the quality doesn't meet up to their standards with a holier than thou attitude. You come off as someone fitting that bill.

[shade_of_fox]

I have to agree with Mason™ of Germany and Tech-Deck, if you expect anything more than appreciation from uploading your work for free then you have come to the wrong place.

[serøtōnin//dɇprivəd]

Originally posted by Tech-Deck:

From what I've seen, there is a lot of entitlement from some modders.

huh? what entitlement? I haven't really seen any entitlement from modders, but I've sure seen a lot of entitlement from the people downloading mods.
"change this because I don't like it"
"this mod is similar to another mod on the workshop! take it down!"
"make a mod for me because I want it!"
there's even some people that will add you just for the sole purpose of requesting mods from you.
if that's not entitlement then I have no idea what is.

Originally posted by Tech-Deck:

Some expecting their mods to be the most downloaded, or even dissing new and inexperienced modders because the quality doesn't meet up to their standards with a holier than thou attitude.

I don't think martino is dissing people who are 'new and inexperienced.' he's dissing people who don't put any actual effort into modding. like people who just download a model from a website or rip models from games and use them in their 'mods.' that's not modding. that's just downloading a model and replacing the RK44's model with it.

[OVKHuman]

well most of the factors are quite inevitable such as you not gaining anything (that is unless you find it fun) or a youtuber using your stuff for money...though yeah the free asset and some of thats true, but again, its true for almost every game mod

[OVKHuman]

Originally posted by Tech-Deck:

People will give feedback, regardless if any of it is useful or not. That's to be expected anywhere on anything. Once you make something and publish it, there's no stopping people from taking and redistributing your content, you should be aware of the implications surrounding modding. I can imagine that seeing your mods on other sites must suck, but there's honestly no stopping it. Imagine how game devs feel with actual paid products being shared around.

If you like modding though, make mods then. Don't expect people to hail you as a hero, or kiss the ground at your feet. Do it as a hobby, not a job. Mod for the sake of modding. From what I've seen, there is a lot of entitlement from some modders. Some expecting their mods to be the most downloaded, or even dissing new and inexperienced modders because the quality doesn't meet up to their standards with a holier than thou attitude. You come off as someone fitting that bill.

^^^^^^^^

[eitanrosen48]

i actually agree with tech-deck and mason but towards certain indie "devs". when steam greenlight was operating, there were "devs" who submitted games that were not their own. there were multiple "devs" who tried to put minecraft, and hyrule total war. then there were the people who tried to get UnitZ onto steam under different names. in regards to the pirating, it will never go away. many devs and publishers tried to combat it. these include SECUROM, always online mode and limited downloads.

[Wooshito]

What

[Wooshito]

So basically what your saying in that is that you feel entitled to being paid in some way? Why? In my eyes modding is what a community creates with a set amount of tools made by the developer in which it supports both the community and developer. I would also like to state that if you wanted to do modding to get paid? What was the point of doing anything from the start? Modding is meant to be made in free time to give experience in the future and to give you some enjoyment and a small audience of some kind. I would also like to point out that this is not a popularity contest, and it never was from the start.

[Sasha Mason]

Originally posted by RepublicofInsanity:

Originally posted by Tech-Deck:

From what I've seen, there is a lot of entitlement from some modders.

huh? what entitlement? I haven't really seen any entitlement from modders, but I've sure seen a lot of entitlement from the people downloading mods.
"change this because I don't like it"
"this mod is similar to another mod on the workshop! take it down!"
"make a mod for me because I want it!"

Trust me, there are entitelt modders and it has lead to projects falling apart and certain modders getting hated to death because their lesser work gets more popular than the work of modders who put a lot more work into their stuff and get less subs. It's absolutely a problem.

[Jeremy Krull]

I really miss your work and I'm sorry that you felt disheartened enough to pull everything. For the record there are quite a few people here that create content that if they were available as paid DLC's I would totally buy them, including your work.